Below are some top AEW WWE news stories of the day.
• As we all know by now, Miro, Malakai Black, and Ricky Starks have officially parted ways with AEW. According to Fightful Select, all 3 men are free to sign elsewhere without having 90-day non-compete clauses, which is the case with WWE releases. This is why Starks was able to debut in WWE on NXT on Tuesday, just a day after getting his AEW release.
Black was initially under contract until 2027, but reports indicate he was done with AEW as early as January, leading to his House of Black stable being renamed to Hounds of Hell.
Miro, who hadn’t wrestled since 2023 despite being healthy, reportedly requested his release in September after not being used in creative discussions for months.
Starks asked AEW not to pick up his option year in late 2023, but the company did and then kept him off TV. He later requested his release in January and was pulled from GCW events before winning the DEFY World Championship shortly before his AEW departure.
Also Read: CM Punk Reacts To Ricky Stark’s WWE Debut On NXT
• A federal appeals court ruled that a former attorney for Vince McMahon improperly withheld documents from a grand jury investigating his multimillion-dollar settlements with two female employees who accused him of $exual abuse. The court determined the documents were not protected by attorney-client privilege under the “crime or fraud” exception.
McMahon recently settled with the SEC, agreeing to pay a $400,000 penalty and reimburse WWE $1.33 million for undisclosed payments. While he considers the matter closed, the status of a separate grand jury investigation remains uncertain.
Here’s what AP News reported:
“The appeals court said the lower court judge found prosecutors had reasonable grounds to believe that McMahon and his lawyer illegally ‘circumvented’ the WWE’s internal controls and created false records when they concealed the employees’ claims and settlement agreements from the company, and that they made false and misleading statements to the company’s auditors — even though McMahon paid the settlements with funds that did not come from the company.
The appellate panel said that while McMahon’s lawyer submitted many materials in response to a grand jury subpoena, they also submitted a log of 208 documents that were being withheld under assertions of attorney-client privilege.
When the lawyer withheld some of the documents claiming attorney-client privilege, prosecutors asked the lower court to compel production of the records — leading to the appeal decided Monday.
The appellate judges wrote, “Because the settlement agreements resolving the Victims’ claims were ‘structured and negotiated … to keep them hidden from (the Company),’ the district court found that all communications about the claims and settlement agreements were made in furtherance of the criminal scheme to keep (the Company) and its auditors unaware of the allegations.’”
